


obey your law of gravity

by elmshore



Series: a constant satellite of your blazing sun [7]
Category: The Wayhaven Chronicles (Interactive Fiction)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Talks, F/M, Other, Pre-Relationship, and ava of all people helps him see it, basically mason is a dummy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:27:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28080132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elmshore/pseuds/elmshore
Summary: Of course, he knew it already, has for longer than he cares to admit, but to say it aloud, to hear the emotion spoken is… freeing, in a way he never imagined it could be.Or, Mason struggles to come to grips with his own feelings, and Ava is there to help.
Relationships: Detective/Mason (The Wayhaven Chronicles), Female Detective/Mason (The Wayhaven Chronicles)
Series: a constant satellite of your blazing sun [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1970686
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	obey your law of gravity

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a response to a prompt on tumblr, but it's morphed into a prequel to a six-part series I have planned. **Spoilers for the new demo!**

The punch takes him by surprise.

Connects with his jaw, solid as stone against the corner of his mouth and the effect is immediate. Pain radiates outward, crackles through him, scorching and electric and mind-numbing. Skitters across his shoulders, down his arms, and into his fingers. It settles deep in his ribs and sticks there, makes itself comfortable, a well-known guest. Leaves him dazed, stars dancing in the corner of his vision — _stars that remind him of her, glittering and gleaming and so out of reach, so far beyond his grasp_ — and he falls into the feeling, lets it consume him until it is all he knows.

Tucks himself into it and reaches for more, tugs it ever closer, a comforting barrier. Pain is easy, simple, and so very familiar.

Blood trickles from an already healing wound and Mason licks it away, metallic tang sharp on his tongue. He feels shaky and off-balance, head swimming with thoughts of too-gold eyes and a smile sweeter than honey and her voice, soft as satin, curling around the syllables of his name and — 

_Fuck_. Not now, not again.

He rights himself, legs spread and arms raised, hands balling into fists. Drops into a stance that grounds him, and tries, with all his might, to banish _her_ from his mind. She has made herself a home there, set down roots without his permission or knowledge, and now her presence is constant, neverending.

And it’s fucking ridiculous. _Infuriating_ , even, how easily it happened. Sets his mouth to a scowl and his blood racing, heart thudding in his chest like a beast howling to be set free.

Mason can’t stop thinking about her, no matter how hard he tries — oh how he tries, every damn day and night and each little moment in-between — and it’s driving him mad. She always returns, in the end, without fail, and he’s right back to where he started.

Confused and angry and — 

The next hit land square in his chest. Knocks the air he doesn’t need from his lungs and sends him skidding backward across the mats until his feet connect with hard concrete. Mason loses balance and falls ungracefully with a guttural sound, a rumbling storm erupting from his lips. Lands on his back and any air left in him is gone, expelled by the force of the impact. His head bounces off the cold unforgiving floor and for a brief moment, the world goes white as it falls away to nothing around him.

It’s peaceful, welcome even, and he wishes it could remain, mourns its leaving.

When it all comes barreling back into focus — colors and shapes and so much more, too much more — Ava stands over him, mouth set into a hard line. Green eyes, sharp and calculating as serpents, watch him with an intensity that even now makes him feel small. She outstretches a hand toward him, a silent offer of help, and he stares at it, half-expecting it to lunge, to bite.

Of course, it doesn’t. Her fingers twitch, another quiet suggestion, and he grabs hold of it. Allows her to hoist him up and off the floor, back onto his feet.

He lets go of her hand — or perhaps she ends the contact first, it’s impossible to tell, neither of them comfortable with such intimacy — and feels an emotion annoyingly akin to embarrassment coil deep in the pit of his gut. Wants her to hit him again or tell him to leave or… _anything_ , really, other than calling attention to the fact that he’s clearly distracted.

That his head is anywhere other than here, that he can’t get her _fucking_ _beautiful_ face out of his mind.

So of course, she does the opposite. Always the contrarian, his Commanding Agent.

“This sparring match was your idea,” her voice is clipped, stings like ice against bare skin, “why even bother to suggest it, if you were not planning to be present?”

Mason snarls, words hitting true, and tears away from her, away from her too-knowing gaze. Stalks from the mats, toward the benches that line the far wall, and attempts to reorient himself, to banish the flashes of red from his vision. “I’m here, aren’t I?” Trembling fingers rip off the wraps around his wrists and hands, motions jittery, arms shaking.

 _It’s only anger or adrenaline_ , he assures himself, because the alternative is fear and there’s no way he’d ever be afraid of feelings — right?

No answer comes, from within or elsewhere, and he growls. 

Typical.

A sigh echoes behind him, heavy, resigned. “Not in the way that counts,” Ava argues, and he can sense her approaching before her steps register, the quiet strength of her presence hard to miss, “your body is here, yes, but your mind is elsewhere.”

She pauses, weighs her words, and Mason braces himself for the question he knows is coming.

“Is something troubling you?”

Images of _her_ crowd his mind, unbidden, unwanted. There is no part of him that she has yet to touch, one way or another — she is everywhere now, a part of him, intertwined in all the ways he sought so hard to avoid. She is a steadfast companion now, an echo which refuses to fade, and perhaps he ought to be used to it by this point, her all-consuming presence, but he isn’t.

He is never prepared for the onslaught. Not for the way he can see her so fucking clearly in his mind as if she were standing before him even now; as if he could simply reach out and feel her under his fingertips, skin warm and smooth as silk. Or for the way he still tastes her on his tongue, flavor lingering from a kiss shared weeks ago — honey and pomegranate, a hint of cinnamon, light yet cloyingly sweet, a rich temptation he can never hope to resist, try and try as he might — in a bakery so full of light and color and… _her_ , all he recalls from that moment is her.

Until he ruined it, just as he always does. Until he took her heart into his hands and shattered it into a thousand little pieces, broken shards of rose-tinted glass — let them scatter onto the table between them, watched them slice into her bit by bit, until she’d been left broken and bloody. Until he put up this goddamn wall between them, impenetrable, impassable.

Until he lost her, maybe forever.

“Mason — ”

“No,” he grits out the word as if it’s sand, tiny granules of shame caught between his teeth. Throat a desert, parched and searing and when he swallows, his tongue is leaden with guilt. It sticks to the roof of his mouth and he nearly chokes on his own damn lies. “It’s nothing,” he snaps, lightning in his tone.

It’s everything, of course, but he refuses to say it, to give it a voice — to her, or perhaps to himself, he can’t be sure.

Mason hopes — and what a strange concept that is, so utterly foreign to him, one _she_ has instilled within him — that Ava will simply let the matter drop. Just wants her to take his words at face value and move on, to leave him to this unspoken misery.

After all, he didn’t come here for a heartfelt conversation — he came to fight, to hit and be hit, to do the one thing he does best.

Hurt, and be hurt.

“Bullshit.”

He’ll never admit it, not even under pain of death, but he _flinches_ at the steel in her tone. Turns to face her, and wishes he hadn’t. Right now, she is not simply Ava — she is Commanding Agent du Mortain, and even Mason knows better than to speak, to argue with _that_ look. So, he wires his jaw shut, clamps down tight, and hard, and waits, his stomach churning as his nerves form a heavy ball in his chest.

A split second passes and he swears that for a moment, her expression softens. Only around the eyes, little crinkles and creases, but he blinks, and they’re gone, cracks sealed over and hidden. “You are an expert with interrogations, Mason, and a keen observer, but sometimes you are so very blind.”

“I don’t — ”

“You have been avoiding the Detective. And she,” Ava continues, voice sharp as a polished blade, driving into him with fierce precision, “has been avoiding you, as well. Four weeks now, and not once have either of you allowed yourselves to be near one another. Before, it was all we could do to keep you from hovering at her side, and now you barely look at the other. What happened?”

Fuck, _fuck_ , not this, not here, not now.

Everything feels tighter, walls closing in and the world a weight atop his shoulders, pressing down. He clenches his fists, digs nails into flesh, and lets the sensation tether him, uses it as a focus.

Draws in a breath, quaking, and lets it out with a harsh scoff. “Maybe my interests have just changed,” and the words sound hollow to his own ears, as if he isn’t the one speaking them, “you know they never last long anyway.”

And they never used to, until now. Until _her_.

Now it is Ava who scoffs, the sound so at odds with her typically composed persona. “Perhaps not before, no, but you and I both know that the Detective is… different,” she is so fucking sure of herself, confidence dropping from every word, and all he wants to do is reach out and hit her. Continue where they left off, to fall back into that familiar rhythm; of punching and kicking and _hurting_ , but his limbs are marble and no longer his to control.

He has become a statue, rooted firmly into place by his own shame and left with no other option but to listen.

“You are not as subtle as you might assume, Mason,” and perhaps it’s only a trick of the light, his overworked mind playing tricks on him, but for a moment — only one — he catches a hint of a twitch, just there at the corner of her lips. “Did you truly think it would slip past our notice? We have spent years with you, did you _really_ believe we would not see the way you are with her?”

“I’m no different than I was before,” Mason defends, voice a sullen growl. Knows in his heart that it’s a goddamn lie and says it anyway, wills it with all his might to be true.

That gaze is biting now, eyes blazing in emerald flames as Ava steps closer. So intense is her stare that it slams into him, forces him to lean back, hackles rising. “You are though and you know it,” she says, quiet, unyielding as iron. “You are drawn to her as if she were a flame and you the moth. The way you look at her, Mason… you _are_ different around her, softer in a way so rarely seen. She puts you at ease, brings you a sort of peace that has seemed ever elusive. And do not tell me it is my imagination,” she cuts in, hand jutting out to stop him, forcing his mouth shut with a snap, “not when Nat and Felix have seen it too.”

Dread coils tight in his stomach, a viper ready to strike. Lungs burning, a flame is set within them, and he doesn’t need it, but Mason sucks in another breath, all the same, feels it stinging as it slides down his throat. He holds her gaze with his own, heart thudding in his chest as if it were attempting to claw its way out of a cage, thrashing at his ribs and he opens his mouth, shuts it, snarls.

Hazy static fills his mind, a building crescendo that rings in his ears — it mingles with the rushing blood and the deafening sirens — and he’s going to lose it, go mad. Needs to move, to do _something_ , before he unravels and breaks completely.

Mason turns sharply, from her and from that damned look. Releases a breath he needn’t have held, an explosive huff that rips from his lips like a current. “I’m just trying to get her into bed, that’s all it is,” and the lies are beginning to taste familiar, a bitter poison that coats his tongue and leaves it numb.

If he says it enough, will it become real?

Fuck, but he hopes so.

“Why are you so intent on not only hurting her but also yourself? Mason, you — ”

And that, it seems, is the final breaking point.

“Because that’s all I’m fucking good for!”

The words are a scream, broken and pathetic, a cry that pours out of him. Whatever might have remained of the strings holding him together snap, a resounding _crack_ that rings in his mind, and finally, at last, he comes undone.

Reacts on instinct, a need to move, to hurt, engulfing him like a hurricane. His foot collides with a bench, crashes against wood and metal and it goes flying, torn asunder by the force of him. Bolts rip from the floor, squealing in agonizing protest, and when it slams into the wall, splinters, the sound is thunderous, lingers in the air around them and he yells, growls, every nerve in his body set alight.

Suddenly, everything is too much. All of it, from the beating of his own heart to the sound of Ava’s breathing, and even the cool air licking at his bare skin. Mason can smell the salt of their sweat, hears a laugh ring out three hallways down, and he squeezes his eyes shut, tries to block it all out, to push it away and focus on nothing, but it doesn’t work.

Never works, not without her.

He longs for the sea of calm that is Cordelia. Her gentle, easy way of quieting the world around him, drowning it all out — every sound and smell and sensation, gone with her presence, until all he knows is her. The cadence of her heart, a blanket he wants to wrap around himself and nestle into, stay there forever and longer; the way she smells of lavender and amber and a touch of bergamot, the scents clinging to him, reminders of her, soothing him in ways he never thought possible.

All he’s ever known is a world too much, and somehow, she makes it worthwhile. 

Mason drags his hands through his hair, fingers twining through dark locks and he holds on, tight as he can. Grounds himself with the pain, nails scrabbling at his scalp. Collapses in on himself, shaking, and he fears that this might be it, might be the end of him, because what else is there to do?

He is lost in this, aimless and wandering.

“What else am I supposed to do? What else did any of you expect from me? You and Felix and Nat, none of you fucking get it!” The words spill out of him, tumble too quickly past dry lips for him to catch or stop and he laughs, a sharp sound, harsh and hollow. “I’m not built for this, I’m not meant for — ” cuts himself short, unwilling to say the word, to give it a voice.

It sits at the back of his throat. Blooms and blooms until it becomes a series of tangled vines filling his mouth, thorns ripping into the tender flesh, blood fresh on his tongue.

A hand brushes his shoulder and the touch is soft, careful, but oh how it hurts all the same. He is so very raw, a wound left open, and her warmth seeps into him, burns him like a brand, and he inhales sharply, shuddering. Ava is quiet for so long that he fools himself into thinking it is done, that perhaps she has given up on this — on him — until she speaks, gentle enough to make him ache.

“You love her,” and it’s not a question, nor a condemnation. 

And he is so very tired of lying. “I do.”

Two words, simple and concise, and yet, the impact of them is staggering. A weight seems to lift from him and he is languid, boneless, adrift. He sags, hands falling from his hair to his lap, and fingers curl there, nails biting into the thick fabric of his pants. Mason stares at them, counts each freckle — _thinks of her, again, and of the way she likens them to stars, each one unique and special_ — and a laugh, mournful, strained, bubbles up from within him.

His mind is an ocean of white haze, filled only with a singular thought: he loves her. Of course, he knew it already, has for longer than he cares to admit, but to say it aloud, to hear the emotion spoken is… freeing, in a way he never imagined it could be.

Ava grips him tighter, holds him together, and he leans into her, longs for her strength.

“I am no great authority on love, Mason, but if I might offer a perspective?” She goes quiet, waits, and he can only nod, desperate for an answer, a guide, _anything_ that might help him navigate this darkened path.

“Love, as with so many worthwhile endeavors, is never easy, Mason. It is difficult and messy and even painful, unbearably so at times, but it is _always_ worth it. And perhaps you will not believe me, but hear this: you are worthy of it, Mason.” There is no hesitation in her voice, only assured conviction, and he almost laughs again, disbelieving.

He swallows the sound, however, when she drops down beside him. Turns, and catches her gaze, drawn in by the warmth that flickers behind their icy exterior.

“It is true, and deep down, you know it. At our cores, we are creatures built for love and no amount of transformations can ever truly erase that,” and then she is leaning forward, pressing her forehead into his own, and the gesture is so soft, so unfamiliar, that he freezes. “I have seen the bond growing between the two of you, and trust me, a love like this? It is rare, happens only once in a lifetime. Do not let it slip past you, Mason, do not deny yourself this happiness. She is worth all of the hardships, and so are you.”

Strange as it seems, the words do help in their own way. Break past the haze, a beacon of light penetrating the fog and guiding him back to shore. It’s not a full rescue, he must make the journey on his own, but it is an offer of help.

Far more than he is used to receiving, at any rate.

Mason swallows, hard. A lump has formed in his throat and he cannot bring himself to name it for what it is, to acknowledge it. Instead, he reaches for her, for this woman who has long ago become family. Grasps at her knee, relaxes at the contact, and says, “What if she doesn’t feel the same? What if — _fuck_ , I don’t know how to do this.”

“She does, Mason,” Ava chuckles and pushes into him, a rare smile tugging at her lips, “believe me, she does. She looks at you as if you put the stars in the sky. Her heart is already yours, all you need do is find the courage to give her yours.”

And he knows it’s true. Has seen it in the way she smiles at him, an expression reserved for him alone — bright and open and so very full of love, the sun itself welcoming him, longing for him. Has seen it in the way she never pushes him, never asks him to be someone other than himself, accepts him despite — no, _because of_ — all of his flaws and jagged edges, sharp corners he fears she might cut herself on if she gets too close.

Cordelia understands him better than he knows himself. She reads him like an open book, finds a way past all of his walls and barriers, and seems happy, in a way, to keep turning his pages. To learn more and more, as much as she can, no matter how dark or fucked up his story becomes.

She is patient with him, content simply to be with him and to allow him into her life, to adapt to his presence — he has noticed the blackout curtains and the fairy lights and the soft way she speaks, the featherlight caress of her touch.

All of it, for him.

He loves her. _He loves her_.

“I already have,” the words are a whisper, spilling out of him and hanging in the air. Ava hums only to pull away from him, and those green eyes are bright with a tenderness he is unused to from her.

“I know,” and then she is standing, movements sleek, precise. Offers him a hand and he takes it, allows her to once again tug him up and to his feet. But this time, she maintains the contact — or perhaps he does, it’s impossible to tell — and gives his fingers a squeeze, gaze locked with his own.

When she speaks, there is a shadow to her words, one born of experience. “Do not let this opportunity go, Mason. You will regret it, and with our lifespans, regret can quickly become a poison that festers.”

She is gone, then. Hand slipping from his own and legs carrying her out of the room, down the hall, until her steps fade from even his keen hearing.

And he is alone, with only his thoughts.

He loves Cordelia.

Now, to tell her. Somehow.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and/or comments are appreciated! I'm also on [tumblr!](https://elmshore.tumblr.com/)


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